


Independence Day

by blue_pointer



Series: Der Freischütz [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016)
Genre: Angst, Bucky's Sisters, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The First Avenger, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Daring rescue, Fights, Hollow - Freeform, Horror, London, London Underground, M/M, Spooky, Stucky - Freeform, Thriller, World War II, peculiarity, steve rogers - Freeform, stucky apart, wight - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 06:37:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8613115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_pointer/pseuds/blue_pointer
Summary: Bucky comes face to tentacles with death. But that doesn't matter, because it's July 3rd. He calls New York to wish Steve a happy birthday, and gets some bad news. It's not safe to ride the underground when you're stuck in your own head. Bucky learns the hard way he's not in Kansas anymore.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This begins directly where 'My Red' leaves off.

Bucky couldn’t say what exactly it was, just that it seemed to have hold of him by something that felt like a boa constrictor wrapped around his waist, and it was big, because he suddenly found himself lifted off the ground about 7 feet into the air. “Holy shit!” 

“Cover your eyes!” someone shouted behind him. “Hold still, I’m going to shoot it!” An inhuman scream followed from somewhere five feet or so above and in front of Bucky. Unlike the largeness and the invisibility of the thing, the sound it made scared Bucky more than he’d ever been scared in his life. He nearly pissed. So instead of trying to demand logic or argue with the person behind him, he just did what they’d said, and slapped a hand over each eye, clamping down. Now that he wasn’t relying on his vision, Bucky could feel something moving right in front of and above him. Something like snakes or vines or tentacles. His whole body was shaking.

He didn’t have to see the missile to know the person shooting had missed. The thing screamed again--more in pain than a threat display this time--“Dammit!”

“What are you trying to do?!” Bucky shouted back at the person he couldn’t see.

“Kill it before it kills you!” came the panicked response. Well, that was comforting.

“No, where are you trying to shoot it?” he asked. There was a fear rising in his stomach. Something was about to happen.

“In the head works best!” his fearless rescuer shouted back.

“Shoot it again!”

“I’m not ready yet! You’re in my way! It’s using you as a shield!” Well, that was a bit more descriptive, anyway.

Bucky felt something tickle the back of his hands, and he screamed, “Just shoot it!”  _ The head the head the head the head! _

The creature’s scream was cut off this time, and suddenly Bucky was falling seven feet to the cobblestones. “Ow, fuck!” He better not have broken anything. That was all he needed to have to explain to the staff sergeant tomorrow.

“Hey, are you alright?” Bucky looked up to find the kid from the bar bending over him holding a crossbow.

“Holy shit!” Bucky threw up an arm to shield himself.

“Oh, no, no. That was for it, not you,” the boy explained quickly, turning it to show Bucky it wasn’t even loaded.

Once he knew he wasn’t in danger, Bucky started to get himself together and take stock of the current situation. His ass was going to be very bruised tomorrow, but nothing felt broken. He pushed himself to his feet, wincing slightly. “You did that, didn’t you?” the kid was asking him.

“Did what?” All of a sudden, all Bucky wanted to do was get back to base and crawl into bed. He would pretend none of this had ever happened. That sounded good.

“I shot wide again--Baron was right; I’m a terrible shot with this thing--but you--the bolt turned in mid-flight and went right through its skull.”

Bucky was dusting himself off. The kid was next. “Look, I dunno what you been drinkin tonight, sailor, but I can’t turn an arrow in mid-air.”

“I saw you do it with a dart!” the kid accused. “A crossbow bolt’s hardly any different.”  

“You’re nuts, kid,” Bucky told him, starting off back toward the main street where he could catch a cab. Of course, the kid followed.

“Wait, you’re honestly telling me that after you were just almost killed by a giant invisible monster, I’m the one who’s crazy?”

Bucky turned around to face him. “Look, I don’t know what the hell just happened, but it’s not part of the world I live in. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re at war. I got enough on my plate worryin’ about that right now.” He turned away again.

“You’re right,” the kid’s voice followed. “The world is at war, but not in the way that you think. The stakes are way higher than you know.”

“Kid, I don’t have time for this.” Bucky thrust his hands into his pockets and walked on.

“What you should be asking yourself is, does it have time for you?” But he could tell by the sound of the kid’s voice he’d stopped following.

Something made him think of Steve all of a sudden, and Bucky turned back. “You take care, kid. Practice your aim. You’ll do fine.”

“This isn’t over,” the kid told him. “You’re not safe out here. They’ll come for you again, I guarantee.”

“Let ‘em try,” Bucky turned away, all bravado, a few minutes after almost having pissed himself. The human mind had an amazing capacity for sublimating trauma.

“Would you rather be the hunter or the hunted?” the kid called after him. “Ask yourself.”

Bucky shook his head. By the time he reached the bar, the kid was gone. Half an hour later, he started to wonder if he’d hallucinated the whole thing.

But Bucky’s bruises were real enough. He woke up the next morning sore and stiff, and wishing he could just stay in bed. Unfortunately, there were no sick days in the army. Bucky made it through his daily routine on one thought alone: tomorrow was Steve’s birthday.

He’d been saving up to call home. He missed his family so much, but Steve most of all. Steve, who’d been so depressed that he was getting left behind. Steve, who’d tried over and over again to enlist. Steve, who refused to be happy  collecting scrap metal and dating all the eligible women in New York without competition. Briefly, the thought crossed Bucky’s mind that he should tell Steve about the weird dream he’d had last night. About the invisible monster and the sailor boy. But, no. That was silly.

He didn’t go out that night, just stayed around base, biding his time. Early a.m. was midnight in New York.

Bucky couldn’t wait. He knew he probably should--well he had to, a little. There was no way he’d be able to sneak out during PT.  But who knew if he’d be able to catch Steve if he waited until morning in New York? And if he called late, called soon he’d probably catch Katie on her way out the door to her shift at the bakery. So Bucky stuck with his plan. His over-eager, dancing-in-place, ‘happy Independence Day, Stevie’ plan. 

Breakfast was his first opportunity to duck over to the PX and use the phone. No one was supposed to be off now, so there was no line for once. He handed over his money and had the operator dial for him. It seemed like forever before the line started to ring. “Come on, come on,” Bucky chanted under his breath. Okay, so it wasn’t even 3am in New York, but surely his family would know if the phone was ringing at this hour, it had to be him, right? He tried to use the twin-telepathy he and Kate had pretended they’d had for years to get his sister to pick up the phone.  _ Come on, Katie, come on. _

There was a click on the line. “Barnes...hello?” It was Kate. She sounded tired.

“You know who it is,” he said. “You get enough sleep, honey? You comin’ down with somethin’?”

“Bucky!” She turned around to yell back, “Patti, Becky! It’s Bucky! Go get mum!” Then she was talking into the receiver again. “I’m--I’m fine. We’re fine.”

Something was definitely wrong. Why didn’t she call Steve to the phone?--Bucky just realized she hadn’t. “Whaddayou need?” he asked her. If it was anything he could send…

“Oh God, it’s the 4th of July.” She seemed to just get it.

“Yeah?” Bucky drew out the word. What did that mean? Why did she say it with dismay? What had happened? A feeling of dread pooled in the pit of his stomach.

“Bucky, I don’t know how to tell you--”

Oh God, it was true. Something had happened to Steve. He’d left his best friend alone, and the unthinkable had happened without Bucky there to protect him.

“I want the phone!” he heard his baby sister yell in the background, and then all of a sudden she was talking to him instead of Kate. “Brother, I miss you! Are you in Europe? I know where London is on a map now!”

Bucky had to try really hard to keep calm. He breathed through his nose.  _ Don’t yell at her, _ he told himself. She doesn’t know any better. “I miss you, too, honey. Yup, I’m in London now, good guess. Hey, hand the phone back to Katie for a minute? She was about to tell me somethin.”

“I can tell you!” Patti volunteered. “Whaddayou wanna know?”

“Please, honey.” He was clutching the phone cord so tightly, his knuckles were white. “Just for a minute, okay?”

“Okay.” She sounded dejected as hell, but this was important.

“Kate!” He was all but shouting into the phone. “What happened to Steve?”

“Bucky, he--first, he joined the army.”

“What?” Bucky was stunned. There was no way the enlistment office at the expo had taken him. No way in hell.

“I know, we couldn’t believe it, either.” Bucky could vaguely hear Becky’s voice in the background, answering some question no one had asked, like she always did. “Yes, I know, Rebecca. Stop interrupting.”

“What’d she say?” Bucky asked, because he’d almost caught it. Something about a special division.

“It’s...it was called special science division or something. No, you can’t tell him. I’m telling him.” Bucky’s mind was reeling. While he listened to his sisters squabble over the phone, a horde of fears descended on him. Science division? What did that mean? They’d accepted Steve so that they could experiment on him? Bucky searched for another reason. But Steve was hardly the brightest bulb on the tree. Science was definitely not his thing. So that had to be it.

“Kate!” Now he was shouting, cutting through the chatter. People at the store were turning around to stare at him. “What. Happened?” Because Steve joining the army was not enough of a tragedy for her not to know how to tell him.

Her voice was shaking. “It was in the paper…”

“Goddammit, Kate!”

“There a problem, soldier?” Bucky turned around to find a MP standing there.

_ Oh, God. _

“It’s 0700. Don’t you have someplace you oughtta be?”

“Please,” Bucky was begging him, clutching the phone like a precious thing. “I’m calling my family in New York.”

The officer was gesturing for Bucky to give him the phone. “Come on, son. I know you miss them, but you can’t skip your duty and cause a fuss like this.”

Something inside Bucky was breaking. He felt numb. “I’ll call back when I can,” he said, before hanging up the phone.  

“That’s it. Now move along.” Something dark was stirring inside of Bucky. He wanted to turn back and punch that self-righteous piece of shit into next week. Who cared if he got court martialed? If Steve was dead--no, it was too horrible to think of.

Bucky passed the day in a fog, never really seeing what was in front of him. When they were dismissed for the day, he wandered off base, away from the bars and dance halls. The first tube station he passed, Bucky descended into the underground and got on a train. He didn’t know where it was going. He didn’t care. He needed to get away. From everything.

_ Steve. _

The worst part was not knowing. Sure, he could call home again. He probably had enough money left for five minutes or so. But this time of day, the girls were still at school, mom at work. And even if he got through, would they tell him?

_ It was in the paper... _

That could only be bad. So, an accident? Bucky closed his eyes as the lights on the train went out. He had a vision of the dream he’d had his first night in London. Was that when it had happened? Had he carried on this whole week and change, just fine, while Steve was lying in Green-Wood cemetery next to his parents?  

He couldn’t help it. Right there in front of a commuter train packed to the gills with god and everybody, Bucky started to cry.

“Poor lamb.” When he blinked away the film of tears, an old woman with glasses almost too thick to see her eyes was looking up at him.

“Sorry,” Bucky croaked, scrubbing at his eyes.

“Missing your sweetheart, are you?” Bucky had no idea how to respond to that. And did it count as missing someone if you were never going to see them again? His lips started to tremble. “Or maybe just homesick?” she guessed.

Bucky wasn’t prepared for her to grab his wrist. “You know what you need, love? A nice cupper tea. Why don’t you help me home with these bags, and I’ll make us some, hm?” Bucky couldn’t even guess her age. Her wrinkles had wrinkles, and her back was nearly stooped double. He couldn’t see how she was going to carry the 6 bags of groceries packed around her feet home alone.

“It’d be my pleasure, Ma’am.” Not the first time he’d been asked out by a dame, but definitely the weirdest. A few stops down, and he was carrying her bags up flight after flight of stairs. No wonder everybody in Europe was in such good shape.  

It was dark when they turned down the narrow street to her house. The neighborhood she’d led him to reminded Bucky a little bit of home. The houses were more narrow than brownstones, packed together like a dog-eared deck of cards, with laundry lines hung from nearly every window. “Don’t you worry, my boy,” she was telling him, stumping along the cobbled street with her cane. “We’ll have you right as rain in no time.”

To be honest, Bucky had had enough of this errand. He was determined to finish what he’d started and get the nice old lady home, but he didn’t really want tea. He just wanted to be alone. This street felt oddly deserted. Maybe he could just drop her off and wander on on his own. England was an island. If he wandered far enough, he’d make it to the Atlantic, right?

As he followed her, lugging the bags, Bucky noticed the row of houses ended abruptly with burnt out shells. The British didn’t have the resources to rebuild from the Blitz in the middle of the war, he knew. All the same, it was shocking to come face to face with damage like this, and see people right next door just carrying on with their lives.

He stopped at the edge of the brick path leading up to her door. “Don’t it bother you?” he found himself asking. The crumbling remains of the houses at the end of the row were like ghosts to him. Had the people who lived there survived? It spooked him to look at the charred frames, like skeletons.  

The old woman turned at her narrow front door. “My boy, when you’ve lived as long as I have…” She smiled. Bucky wasn’t sure she had any teeth left at all. “Come inside. I’ll light the fire.”

A fire didn’t sound half bad. The damp, chill English air seemed to permeate to his marrow. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to get warm again after being here less than two weeks. Bucky hoisted the bags up for the last little trek to her door.

“Stop!” That voice sounded familiar. Bucky turned to glance over his shoulder.

_ Oh no. Not this guy again. _ He turned around to give the kid what-for. “Are you following me?!” Talk about not knowing when to quit.

“You wish!” the kid shot back. “I wasn’t following you, I was following him.”

_ Him? _ Bucky glanced around. The old woman had gone inside her house, leaving the door ajar for him to follow. But there was no one else around. “Kid, you’re a few cards short of a deck, you know that?”

“And you’re the worm who keeps jumping on the hook,” the kid said.

“What does that even mean?” These grocery bags were getting heavy. Bucky should just go inside and shut the door on his crazy ass.

“I warned you,” the kid said, raising his crossbow. Bucky dropped the bags, wondering if he could make the cover of a short stone wall he’d passed on the path up. “Duck!” Unsure whether the kid was talking to him or not, Bucky hit the ground. As if in slow motion, he watched the crossbow bolt sail over his head and bounce off the enormous carving knife that slashed through the air just where he’d been standing. Almost as an afterthought, he reached up and caught it as it fell.

Like a strange breed of uniformed crab, Bucky scrambled back toward the street. The thing that had shambled back out of the old lady’s house wore the same glasses she’d had on, but it only resembled a human being in the way stretched out strands of sugar resembled taffy. It had limbs, but they were too long, and bent at impossible angles.

“You must be the boy’s going around London killing my associates.” The thing’s voice wasn’t so much a voice as a noise in his head, accompanied by a kind of screeching like nails on a chalkboard. It paralyzed Bucky in place. “Naughty, naughty.”

“Stay back!” the boy shouted as it advanced on Bucky, walking on insect-like legs.

“Patience,” it told him. “I’ll deal with you next.” It bent over him, casting a twisted shadow, and Bucky felt like he was going to be sick. Unlike the old lady, this thing had teeth. Rows of needle-like teeth the length of his index finger.

“This lamb has been waiting patiently all the way from Silvertown station. We shouldn’t keep him waiting.” It slashed down at his neck, then, and Bucky reached up just in time to catch the knife. He watched another crossbow bolt fly wide, and heard the thing laugh. “I like you, boy. You make me larf.” 

“Would you tell me before you shoot?!” he shouted, hoping the kid remembered. He seemed dumb as a box of rocks. God, the thing was strong! Bucky wasn’t sure how he was holding the knife back, or how he even still had fingers. He could feel how sharp the blade was. The thing was still laughing, and Bucky was sure that was the only reason he was still alive.

“Such lovely eyes,” it screeched. Bucky watched a second elongated limb slowly raise an icepick. “I’ve been wondering how they’ll taste--”

He took his chance, then, plunging the crossbow bolt with all the force he could muster into its abdomen. It screamed and lost strength long enough for him to pull away, and Bucky scrambled back, somehow taking the knife with him. He backed into the wall, flipped over it, kept going, until he was side by side with the kid in the street.

Even from there, he could tell the thing wasn’t finished. He hadn’t stabbed it hard enough, or maybe not in the right place. “Kid, you stink,” Bucky told him, reaching out for the crossbow.

“Those were my only two bolts!” the kid told him in a panic. Okay, shouting about the stupidity of going around with only two bits of ammunition for your weapon would have to wait. Bucky snatched it out of his fingers anyway, and pulled back the string, placing the carving knife in the channel. “That’s never gonna work!” the kid shouted. 

Bucky pulled the trigger, watched the knife fly out wide, flip wildly, and embed itself in the creature’s left eye socket. “You got anything else to say?” he asked the kid. “Or you gonna go get your arrows?” Bucky didn’t wait for him to answer, he just turned and started walking back the way he’d come, crossbow slung over one shoulder.

“Hey, wait!” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the kid scrambling to find the other arrow. “Where are you going? That’s mine!”

Bucky stopped. “Way I see it, you can’t shoot for a damn. No point carrying a weapon you can’t use.” He watched the kid jerk the bolt from the dead thing’s body, then come running back.

“So how’m I supposed to fight them?”

“You show me where they are, and I’ll shoot ‘em.”

The kid’s blue eyes widened. “You changed your mind?”

With Steve gone, the world had lost its color. This twisted nightmare landscape that seemed to lead away from where Bucky was standing didn’t seem so different from the one he was waiting to enter in the war. More importantly, nothing really seemed to matter anymore. Nazis, giant invisible monsters, eyeball-eating insect people, any of them would do. “Get me that knife,” he told the kid, nodding for him to go back.

“How did you do that?” the kid was asking. He had to plant his foot on the thing’s corpse in order to jimmy the knife out of its skull. “It was trying to cut you, but you just grabbed it.” Bucky knew there was something he’d been forgetting. He looked down at his right hand. Still had fingers. He turned his hand over. There wasn’t so much as a mark. But he remembered the feel of the blade against the balls of his hand.

He shook his head, disbelieving. Bucky didn’t have an explanation. “I don’t know.”  

The kid came up to stand next to him, also looking down at his hand. “It must be another aspect of your peculiarity.” He glanced at Bucky. “You really didn’t know?”

Bucky just shook his head. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to feel, but whatever it was, he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel much of anything right now.

“My name’s Jake,” the kid said, extending his hand. Bucky just looked at it for a minute before realizing he was supposed to shake it.

“James Barnes.” Not sergeant. That was the army. He was leaving that behind. And not Bucky. Bucky was just for Steve. Steve, who might be lying in Green-Wood right now.

“Well, here’s the knife.” Jake held it out to him, handle-first. “Can I have my crossbow back?”

Bucky took the knife. “No.” He turned and walked back toward the station.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Der Freischutz Series](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15002654) by [Night (Night_Inscriber)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Night_Inscriber/pseuds/Night)




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